


The Conductor

by deathwailart



Category: Original Work
Genre: Death, Gen, Orchestra, choir
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-02
Updated: 2012-02-02
Packaged: 2017-10-30 12:46:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/331879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for Imaginary Beasts, book 31, music.  See end notes for notes on the music.</p>
    </blockquote>





	The Conductor

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Imaginary Beasts, book 31, music. See end notes for notes on the music.

As he does every night, he rises from his resting place, his senses filled with the sickly sweet scent of dead flowers, their pervading odor warring with the petrichor all around them. He dusts himself off, the dried mud falling away easily as he adjusts his moth-eaten frock coat, his silk satin stock loose and in disarray -- but there is still much to do, so he collects his top hat, gives it a shake and places it on his head as he picks up his case. He is buried in the simplest of graves, the grave of a pauper; for Death is simple in the end. His one luxury is his beloved violin, and as he strolls about the graveyard in his bare bone legs, he opens the case and removes it. He perches on a gravestone that is crumbled with age, the name worn smooth from centuries of wind and rain, a healthy coating of moss decorating it all the way down to where the weeds rise up to meet it. Careful as ever, he sets the violin case down by his feet, metatarsals rattling. The cloth is drawn from his violin, the bow lovingly drawn across the resin with its deep groove; he tunes in mournful, moaning tones, the only sound in the night air.  
  
Ever since it was written in homage to him, he has played the same melody every night, his opening refrain to rouse his sleeping comrades -- it is their Morning Mood, fitting music for the dead, and the bare bones of the older and more decayed among them rattle in time as they rise. He sways with the music, up on his feet as he moves amongst the monuments and gravestones, new and old, elaborate and simple, well-tended and abandoned. He whirls through them like the proverbial dervish, his coat tails flying, his bones somehow staying together despite the fact that he has no skin, no tendons, no muscles, no ligaments. Once one has passed into the void, the rules no longer apply so stringently.  
  
"Death?" A lilting voice interrupts once his solo is over and he turns, seeing a face he has known so long: his much adored spinto soprano, from the Victorian era too. She should be but bones but as is sometimes the case, she retains enough joy in her departed state to look as she once did when she passed. Young – lost so young, so tragic – with her pale skin and rosy cheeks, chestnut hair gleaming in her loose ringlets. Victorian dress of corset and lace and petticoats and even a bustle but somehow she has long modern striped socks beneath, which he can only catch a glimpse of though a small rip in her skirts and in the little patch of her shoes between the toes and the buckle. "Are you ready for us?"  
  
"I, my darling, am always ready for all of you," he replies, taking her hand in his, the violin in the other; she stretches up to press her lips to his cheekbone. "Come, it is time to take our places before the night marches away from us."  
  
And in the clearing, where the yew trees shield the cemetery from the world beyond, they gather. Death's children (or so they are called even if they are not truly his and there are whole families here, generation following generation) take their places in the choir of the dead – choir of the damned, some would say. Musicians of every stripe are clustered about. Strings, percussion, woodwind, brass and even a harp, a skeletal beauty (literally, just bones, just like him) from a bygone era, with long elegant strings of pearls decorating her cervical vertebrae. She picks out a trill of notes, runs through the chromatic scale and he nods.  
  
His lady holds his violin case reverently, allowing him to gently put his instrument away. He sets the case on the ground just as gently, and then mounts a small flight of stones, raising him just high enough to see and be seen. At the top, he plucks the index finger of his left hand free with a crack and a pop, tapping it against his ribs. Why carry a baton when you have serviceable replacement parts? Three taps and he clears his throat (or goes through the motion of it, there is no structure to allow for such a thing truly), raises his arms and smiles out at them. His scattered orchestra, the woodwind and strings curving in a semi-circle in front of the choir, the brass to the left by the sopranos with the basses behind them, the percussion by the altos and tenors.  
  
"I am glad to have you all gathered here once more," he begins, tilting his head to take them all in, the children shuffling around – he has a tiny section of little choir boys who all lost their lives in a fire, their once angelic faces burned ruins that twist their smiles into tortured grimaces. But their voices have remained as pure as ever and they are a welcome addition to this chorus. "We have many items to get through this night, we will begin with the Irish Blessing, tuning please?"  
  
At his command, the first violin comes in, then the oboe, then the first trombone and finally the choir as they sigh their way through chords. To the world around them, to a passerby, they will remain unseen, unheard beyond a whisper on the wind, the creek of a tree branch or any frightened bird or beast they disturb. Birds and beasts always know them, are wary until they are close to passing or have passed. However, there is quite the retinue of cats in all stages of decomposition and decay, which loiter and wind between legs, their purring amplified by their hollowed bodies.  
  
Once the tuning is complete, a hush descends until he raises his baton finger, launching them into song.  
  
The rehearsal lingers long into the night, but the choir are dismissed early, to stroll or to remain and enjoy, as many of them do. There are ladies with their old parasols flirting with modern young men with tattoos and ripped jeans and hoodies. Some choose to leave, to go out into the town to see the world, somewhat depressing for they cannot touch it truly. They are casual observers, a flicker at the edge of the vision of the living. Only Death may touch. He, who goes to each and every soul marked to die and takes them into his arms, wraps his shroud of night about them (for he does wear a shroud, not his moldering frock coat, top hat or short trousers when he comes to take them, one must have some sense of grandeur or give in to the common conceptions about death).  
  
But all things must come to an end. Dawn pinkens the sky, tinges of orange around the indigo horizon and when the sun rises they will all return to the grave, those are the rules, save for Death. The crescendo builds; Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain their traditional ending. His lady sits by his side, her back against the stones, his violin case in her lap as she strokes over aged leather.  
  
They file out in an orderly fashion; he reattaches his finger, and then takes her hand, for he is ever a gentleman, especially gentle with the girls and ladies and children he takes into the next world. They link arms, her dress rustling through grass and dried leaves.  
  
"Well, my dear?"  
  
"Lovely as always," she smiles and removes a leaf from his shoulder.  
  
"I do wish we could play more, to some sort of audience, but there is no way for such things to be arranged," he sighs wistfully, stepping over a root or perhaps a stray bone someone will collect later.  
  
"You give us purpose, my love, something to do during these endless stretches of time, when there is so little we can truly do." Her long lashes flutter and he stops, twirls her under his arm to catch the scent of rotting flowers. She wore perfume when she died, he recalls (he recalls all, every death, every detail, Death must know such things) the scent of freesia, violets, roses and lilies.  
  
He loves the scent of her now.  
  
"The night is not quite over, my lady," he comments, voice rising as they are nearly at her grave now, her box lined with silk – well-loved, a rare sight all too often – and he will lower her in eventually, but for now he seats her on her grave stone, presses his skull to her forehead and removes his violin once more. The serenade of Death to a Lady.  
  
When it is through, tears cling to her eyelashes and he wipes them away with the bony tips of his fingers, cupping her warm cheeks, bow in one hand, violin in the other.  
  
"Will you do my the honour of singing for me?"  
  
"Of course, what would you like?"  
  
"I think you know."  
She smiles as he lowers her down, his own jaw loose in his best approximation of a smile and they all know, they all see a face once they have known him long enough. " _Vissi d'arte, vissi d'amore,_ _non feci mai male ad anima viva!_ _Con man furtiva_ _quante miserie conobbi aiutai_."  
  
She closes the lid herself, it is too final, too presumptuous for him to do for her as he makes his way to his grave high on the hill, her voice following him with the swaying of the trees. He clambers back into his own grave, removes the top hat to one side, the violin case to another and folds his hands across his chest as the dirt falls into place, into the spaces and hollows. The day is for the living but so soon it will be time for the night music of Death and his choir and orchestra.

**Author's Note:**

> Death's opening piece: Danse Macabre by Camille Saint-Saëns  
> Irish Blessing is most likely known better as May the road rise to meet you  
> Night On Bald Mountain by Mussorgsky - most know it as the second last piece from Fantasia  
> Vissi d'arte: a soprano aria from act II of the opera Tosca by Giacomo Puccini. It is sung by Tosca as she thinks of her fate and how the life of her beloved, Mario Cavaradossi, is at the mercy of Baron Scarpia.


End file.
